Transition to Transparency

Social media has made it nearly impossible for a company to be evade being called out on the carpet for practices that don’t sit well with its customers, which is why you now hear so many CEOs jumping on the transparency train.

If it wasn’t an original part of an organization’s DNA, the transition to transparency is going to be difficult. That’s an observation, not an aspersion. All behavior can be un-learned or replaced by a new set of values. So it’s definitely possible but it’s likely going to be a lot of hard work – much more effort than announcing you are going to become more transparent.

If you’re a startup – or any new company – you can nail it from the beginning. Take Kind Snacks, for example. This young snack bar maker has for the past three years been one of the best-performing small companies in its category, with revenue growing from $100 million to $1 billion during that period. Kind Snacks has five of the top 10 bars in a category crowded by a couple thousand competitors, and the company has a lot of people scratching their heads wondering how they’re doing it.

It’s no mystery. Kind Snacks owns transparency – both literally in its packaging, and in its underlying company philosophy. The snack bar wrappers are clear, so you can see what you’re buying. The company’s mission statement is “Do the KIND Thing – for your body, your taste buds, & the world!”

When transparency is the way you start out in the world, you can’t help but be as close and as clear as possible. We’ve taken that to heart, as well. It’s why as we designed a way to make routine automotive service a deliverable product, we knew our solution would need to allow customers to see exactly what we were doing to their vehicles.

Kind Snacks had an easier time getting to product transparency. All they had to do was apply clear cellophane. We’ll be using a material far more durable and protective, but we’ll still make our commitment to delivering convenience perfectly clear.